FYI - I just posted this over at /r/bonsai.
Open Letter to the Bonsai Community: Follow-up on Adam Lavigne (adamaskwhy)
Ok, I’ll admit that I’m more than a little hesitant to re-open
this particular can of worms, but here goes.
No matter where you stand on this particular issue, I ask that you read this with an open mind. In the interest of transparency and moving forward together as a community, I’m going to lay out everything as best I can.
A few months ago, there were some pretty serious allegations levied against Adam Lavigne, a long time member of this community. Specifically, the allegations were racism and xenophobia towards another member of the bonsai community. One of our mods took it upon himself to write an angry open letter, which none of the other mods approved, and that resulted in a whole lot of drama, much of which I’d just assume leave in the past. Those of you who were following along know exactly what I’m talking about. The end result was that Adam received a temporary ban until we could figure out exactly what was going on.
At the peak of the drama, I can say this. I observed some pretty atrocious human behavior. I saw people who I know for sure knew even less than I did (and frankly, I didn’t know all that much) suddenly willing to pick up pitch forks and throw somebody who was previously very well-respected all the way under the bus, then stop the bus so they could back up and run over him another 3 or 4 times. All without anything other than hearsay and 2nd and 3rd hand accounts.
No matter where you stand on this issue, I think that is something we should all pause and reflect on. What burden of proof are you willing to accept before you are willing to punish somebody for something? I learned, much to my dismay, that many people’s bar for evidence is very, very low. The willingness to attack someone without any hard evidence was actually extremely disheartening to me, and it really soured me on the sub for a few months. For those wondering why I haven’t been around as much lately, that was why. I needed a bit of space to contemplate.
So let’s lay out some facts about the issue at hand:
- The alleged incident did not occur here.
- The alleged victim has never come forward to corroborate anything.
- The vague public details that were available all came from third parties
- Literally everything I’ve ever heard about this has been hearsay from 2nd and 3rd hand accounts. I’ve still never even gotten a clear run-down of precisely what is alleged to have happened from anyone who was directly involved.
- So essentially, we were given zero transparency into whatever occurred, yet we were asked to punish somebody based on a leap of faith.
- Full disclosure: I was shown a couple of things that were presented to me as evidence, but imho, they weren’t evidence of anything but interpersonal drama. Certainly nothing even remotely on the level of what Adam was accused of.
Here are some facts about what has happened since:
- In the time since this happened, there have been no further accusations. Zero.
- BSF (Bonsai Society of Florida) investigated, and an email was sent out to about 600 Florida bonsai people asking for corroborating evidence, and it resulted in no additional evidence or corroboration of anything that Adam was accused of.
- Additionally, the Central Florida Bonsai club took a vote of confidence, and 90% of members voted in full support of Adam.
- Numerous well-respected bonsai artists who do know Adam have come forward and vouched for him, some of whom know both Adam and Juan.
- Adam has an impeccable track record here. I don’t know Adam all that well personally, but I do recognize a good teacher and a good person when I see one, and my interactions with him have not only been 100% positive, but I’ve only ever seen him be helpful and positive to other people. So I feel pretty comfortable vouching for him too.
So based on all this information, in good conscience, I personally don’t feel that we can maintain this ban any longer. If anything, it has stayed in place much longer than it should have.
So at this point in time, we would like to welcome Adam back to the /r/bonsai sub as a full member of the /r/bonsai community, in good standing, effective immediately.
I’d also like to take personal responsibility for the duration of the ban. It did not imply guilt or anything else. In truth, facing down the Internet mob was incredibly overwhelming for me over the summer at a time when I really couldn’t afford for it to be. It had a huge impact on my life, my business, and my family. I’m sure it was nothing compared to what Adam had to deal with, but it was pretty intense to say the least. So I needed to let it drop for a while, and I needed the angry mob to put down their pitch forks. I can say this though - may you never need to face down an angry Internet mob. I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy. I guess I can now check
that one off my bucket list.
Believing victims
For those who will say that we should believe victims, I will respond that
I agree with you. That was where we started, and that’s why we left the ban in place while we looked into things. But when the alleged incident does not occur here, no victim or directly involved party comes forward to corroborate, and no satisfactory details ever emerge, I would ask you in response - just how far should one go to punish somebody based on something that may not even have happened and for which you have no evidence?
I’m OK with the fact that we issued a temporary ban until we could get to the bottom of things. I do think the ban lasted too long, and again, I’ll take full responsibility for that, but I also think it was reasonable to look further into things given the very serious nature of the allegations. We do take this stuff very seriously, and protecting the overall community was first and foremost on our minds.
And just for the record - I don’t know Juan, but I do know plenty of people who do know him. He sounds like a great guy, and I honestly wish him the best, and I hope to meet him some day in my travels.
And also for the record, I bear none of the parties involved any ill will, and I hope that we can all come together as a community and heal the rift that was opened here.
As part of this, we have added a more explicit anti-harassment policy to the sub rules. We already had civility rules in places, but we’ve taken that a level further.
The new rule in the sidebar and wiki is:
- Hate has no place here. Harassment on the basis of race, religion, national origin, sex, sexual preference, age, etc is unacceptable and will not be tolerated.
This was pretty much always the case, but hopefully now it’s crystal clear. Again, we do take this stuff very seriously. I tried to cover the obvious bases there, but if anyone feels strongly about something I may have missed, please PM me and let me know. Also, I’m aware that those on mobile aren’t seeing the sidebar as intended. There’s a technical reason behind that, and I’ll fix it as soon as I have the time. In the meantime,
everything is in the wiki.
I’m sure that some of you won’t agree and have already made up your minds, but I ask you - do you
really know what happened? Based on the information available to me, I choose to believe Adam, and to take him at his word when he says that he did not do the things we was accused of. I have no satisfactory evidence to back up
any of the allegations, and I have every reason to believe that he’s telling the truth.
Whatever did happen between Adam and Juan, I’m going to just let stay between them at this point. In the interest of moving forward, I ask that you all do the same.
And even if you don’t agree, I respectfully ask that you accept our decision and judgement on this. This was not an easy process, and there was no clear cut right or wrong answer here. No matter what we did, somebody was going to be mad at us. Sometimes in life, when you’re in a leadership position, you just have to make the best judgement call that you can with the information you have available. We’ve done our best to look at the facts and draw the best conclusions we can. For those of you who have been around a while and have interacted with me, you’ll know that I try to be extremely fair and objective with people, and tend to give people the benefit of the doubt whenever I can. I hope you know that if
any of you were in Adam’s shoes, I would expect the same level of evidence before throwing
you under the bus.
Closing Thoughts
I learned throughout this process that two of my most cherished core values are "Due Process" and "Innocent until Proven Guilty". In the absence of any sort of guide or precedent, those were the guiding principles I chose to follow here. Just know that we did the best we could in an impossible situation. Other people may have handled things differently, but I can pretty firmly say that nobody could have known the 100% right thing to do. This situation was a series of tough judgement calls based on extremely limited information. No black & white answers here for any of this.
As far as I’m concerned, we followed reasonable due process and then some, and we have reached a fair and reasonable conclusion to the best of our ability. Along the way, we kept the best interests of the community at heart at every step of the process. I honestly don’t know what more could be expected.
This entire situation was gut-wrenching for everyone involved, and I ask now that we come together as a community, forgive and forget, and let the healing process commence. Both Juan and Adam are extremely talented bonsai artists who have added tremendous value to the bonsai community over the years. I ask that we do our best to let this be water under the bridge, and let’s go back to learning from them, and working on little trees together.
If any of you have any questions about the process, I’ll do my best to answer them in the thread below. But I’ll warn you now - I’m not going to re-litigate this, and I won’t hesitate to remove any comments that I feel cause damage or re-open the rift. The decision has been made, and that’s that. Let’s do our best to move on from here.
I sincerely hope that I don’t lose any friends over this, but we cannot in good conscience leave a ban in place that is harming somebody’s reputation and career without sufficient evidence to justify it.
I look forward to many more years of working on little trees together as a community.
Cheers,
~MM
